That was after Microsoft had sued Barnes and Noble in 2011…over the NOOK.

I do think this e-bookstore, as shown, is a serious blow to B&N’s digital literature business…but that’s a bit like discovering a burned out lightbulb on the Titanic. 😉 Not only is Microsoft no longer supporting B&N, they are taking the life raft and slapping them with it. 😉

Just as many reporters aren’t mentioning Microsoft’s history, I don’t think most customers are going to remember .lit and MSReader.

What were those?

Back in 2000, Microsoft released software for reading e-books, MSReader (the book format was .lit). That was seven years before the first Kindle release. It was one of the big formats at the time, and people had faith in Microsoft.

In 2011, four years after the introduction of the Kindle, Microsoft killed MSReader, which sort of stranded people who had purchased .lit books (although they still worked…while you had software with which to read them. Some people converted them to other formats). That left a sour taste for some customers…but I don’t think that’s going to have an impact on the new implementation (which I do think is likely to be real).

If we ignore the past and act like Microsoft is just getting into the e-book market, do I think this will be a success?

Sure…as long as their expectations aren’t too high.

Basing all this on that MSPowerUser report (which I recommend), Windows 10 users will buy books just like they buy apps, videos, and music. There will be a book section. You can buy it right there…and read it in Microsoft Edge (their newest browser), which has EPUB support.

Books shown in the story are from tradpubs (traditional publishers), and include current well-known titles.

They also clearly show that the books will be available on both desktops and mobile (tablets).

The convenience of it is going to convince some people. I think it’s important to note culturally that it puts e-books right into the mix with other digital content. I think it helps illustrate that books are not endangered. 🙂 My intuition is that more books are being read than were being read, say, ten years ago. It may be harder to track that, since books have moved out of being probably 90% controlled by under ten large companies (there used to be “Big Six” of publishers in America, now the Big 5) to hundreds or thousands of tiny publishers (often just the author).

I don’t think it particularly hurts Amazon…it’s not going to much easier to buy a MS book than a Kindle book, even on a Windows 10 device. Microsoft is, interestingly, becoming more of a pop culture ecosystem than it was…but it doesn’t match what Amazon can do for a customer, in part because Amazon can deliver “diapers and windshield wipers”.

One interesting thing: I saw right off a commenter asking if Cortana (Microsoft’s digital assistant, like Siri/Alexa/OK Google) will be able to read the e-books…the way that Alexa can read Kindle store books (unless blocked by the publisher) and play Audible audiobooks. That wasn’t apparent.

Looks like we are likely to see this in April of this year.

Speaking of books still being part of our lives, the TV network Nickelodeon has just introduced

This looks like an interesting implementation. Part of it is including tips for parents…for example, book club type questions you can ask after your child reads a book.

Interestingly to me, this is not a subser (subscription service)…it’s a “piece purchase” plan, where you pay for each book. You do get three books for free when you first get the app, but that’s an incentive, not a pattern. I saw a concern expressed about that by a commenter…who thought $2.99 was too much for a book. I think subsers are particularly good for kids…many kids read very quickly, and they may have diverse, fickle, and unpredictable interests. 😉

Books are interactive, and can be read offline. There is a reward system (badge style), and overall, it appears to me that they have been thoughtful about this.

That doesn’t mean it won’t be there eventually…despite what some people say, Amazon has always carried (some) competitors’ apps in their appstore, including Netflix and Hulu.

I think reading (yes, book reading) is alive and well…and likely to actually be growing.

What do you think? Are more kids reading…and more adults? Will five-year olds now be reading more at 25 than 25 year-olds now? How about at sixty-five? Will you use Windows 10’s new e-bookstore? Do you remember MSReader, and if so, does that affect your feelings about the new store? What about piece buying versus subsers for kids? Feel free to let me and my readers know what you think by commenting on this post.

* When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get. Shop ’til you help!

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in theThe Measured Circle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get. Shop ’til you help!

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

I think it’s going to be a great thing in groups…maybe especially with kids, although I haven’t seen enough of it to be sure about the appropriateness. It is rated for “all ages” though, so it’s probably okay.

Cubistry is also part of this group: 4.4 stars (out of 5) with 1,674 customer reviews!

Another very popular game in this batch: Bloons TD 5, with 2,075 reviews and 4.4 stars.

Other titles include:

Docs to Go Premium Key

Toca Kitchen 2

Distant Suns

Songsterr Guitar Tabs & Keys

Sleepy Time

Bridge Constructor Playground

C25K Pro (this is a good wellness program: I know of several people who have used it. It stands for “Couch to 5K”…at least, I think this is the one they’ve used)

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get. Shop ’til you help!

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

is up to 80% off American history (and other non-fiction) e-books, in honor of Independence Day (which is nex weekend).

There are twenty books in this deal, and some are certainly worth a look!

I like reading non-fiction: in fact, I think if I checked, I’ve probably read more non-fiction books in the past couple of years than fiction ones. I do like to think I’m an eclectic reader, though…that’s just my sense of it, I don’t really analyze my reading patterns.

History?

I read it, but I would guess I’m less likely to read what most people would consider mainstream history than intense looks at narrow topics. For example, one of my favorite books which I read in the few years of having a Kindle was

Was that a history book? Sure, but I doubt it’s a topic that comes up in many high school or college history courses. 😉

As a Kindle Daily Deal, these prices only apply today, and may not apply in your country (I have readers all over the world…hi, readers!). Always check the price before you click or tap that Buy button.

Remember also that you can buy these books today at the reduced price as a gift, and delay the delivery for the appropriate gift-giving occasion.

I appreciate that Amazon is not referring to this as a “bundle”, which has been the case in similar sales in the past. You can get as many of these as you want, but you do make individual choices.

I always figure on these, why not? 🙂 I have them go to the Cloud only, so they aren’t taking up any memory on our devices unless we choose to download one. All it takes is the time that it takes me to click or tap on them. 🙂

Titles include (note: I have updated the list, because it does this weird thing of shuffling the titles when I click on one, and I missed some):

*When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get. Shop ’til you help!

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

There are some with thousands of reviews here…one of the highest rated is

Plants vs. Zombies

with a 4.4 rating out of 5 stars, and 4,188 customer reviews.

Another stand-out is the Oxford Spanish Dictionary, which normally costs $19.99. 4.5 stars, although only six reviews. It looks like it is a pretty sophisticated app. I don’t believe it can be used as the look-up dictionary, but it does let you favorite word, and has a “fuzzy filter”, so you don’t need to spell things correctly. This is a bilingual dictionary, by the way, designed in part for learning.

Other titles:

Virtua Tennis Challenge

Unmechanical

RRDP Pro Client

Amazing Alex Premium

Osmos HD

Pudding Monsters HD

Table Top Racing

LectureNotes

Fun English Course

Wolfram Alpha

Chess and Mate

Adventure Time Game Wizard

Songster Guitar Tabs & Chords

F18 Carrier Landing II Pro

Flightradar 24 Pro

MeteoEarth

Splashtop Whiteboard

Prince of Persia Classic

Mobile Doc Scanner

TouchDraw

As always, check the price before you hit that Buy button…this may not apply in your country.

Enjoy!

Bonus deal: you know I always like to do something with books, right? 🙂

Goodreads (owned by Amazon) has a group where publishers/authors can post that they are giving away books:

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get. Shop ’til you help!

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

In some ways, it’s about Amazon’s positioning as knowledgeable about books…knowledgeable and credible, which are not synonyms. You can be knowledgeable and have no one believe you (ask Cassandra), and you can be credible without having a lot of knowledge on a topic.

When I’ve trained trainers, I’ve even taught the latter…how to be credible.

A few quick notes on that:

Use numbers…that always impresses people. For example, if I was teaching an Excel class many years ago, I could be in front of people who thought they knew Excel quite well. I could say (back then), “There are 256 columns in Excel…does anyone know how many rows? 65,536.” That gave me instant credibility…even if it was just a memorized fact. It doesn’t have to be a complicated number: “There were seven castaways on Gilligan’s Island.” That may get people counting to confirm…and when they do, they are impressed with you

When in doubt, use big words. That also makes you sound credible…not approachable or relatable, necessarily, but it does help with credibility. 🙂 That’s only true if you use them correctly…well, if somebody knows what the word actually means, that is. I have to reset my reaction when someone uses the word “decimated” (often “absolutely decimated” or “completely decimated”) to indicate a nearly complete reduction. “Decimated” technically means “reduced by one tenth”. If there were 100 soldiers, and you reduced it to ninety, you decimated that group. At least, that’s what it used to mean…my now adult kid who is a linguist has convinced me that it is usage that matters. I still have the emotional reaction, but I can reset it 🙂

Use the jargon. I work with medical folks, and when I can use a word that they use appropriately, it really ups my credibility

Speak quickly. Again, this is just when you are establishing credibility, not when you are training a concept. Most people don’t think you can lie at high speeds…that you have to think about what you are saying too much. If you excitedly say something, smashingallthewordstogether, people will think you are being honest. Don’t believe me? Try saying something really slowly and deliberately out loud…it will likely sound even to you like you are lying

Be imperfect. Pause, use an “um”, look to the ceiling (up to the left, typically), laugh at yourself for what you just said…those can all make you seem genuine, and not rehearsed

Now, clearly, you can’t just follow techniques to gain credibility…you need to be reacting in the moment and have empathy for what your audience is feeling.

That said, I come across as credible in person…and it can be a problem for me.

I’ve been a boss.

I’ve said to people something like, “Now, I don’t know yet if this is going to happen, so don’t hold me to it, but it’s possible that we are going to xyz.” I’ve then had people telling others we were going to xyz, and saying, “Bufo said so.”

That means I have to be careful about what I say. 🙂

I was being observed by one of my favorite managers, and in debriefing a class, the manager said at one point, “Then you did that hypnosis thing you do,” and just went on to another point.

I said something like, “Wait, what? What hypnosis thing?”

I realized later that I do use something like “guided imagery”.

Never, by the way, for nefarious reasons!

It’s just as important and difficult (sometimes) to make people believe in something which is true and good for them as it is to make them believe in something which is false and bad for them.

That said, let’s talk about this list. 🙂

I do like biographies and memoirs, but I like a lot of things. 😉

Here’s the list from Amazon, and whether or not I’ve read them:

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers: no

A Long Way Home by Ishmael Beah: yes

A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway: no

A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson: no

American Caesar by William Manchester: no

American Lion by Jon Meacham: no

American Prometheus by Kai Bird: no

American Sniper by Chris Kyle: no

American Sphinx by Joseph J. Ellis: no

Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt: no

Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank: yes

Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy: no

Autobiography of Mark Twain by Mark Twain: yes

Ball Four by Jim Bouton: no

Black Boy by Richard Wright: no

Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin: yes

Born Standing Up by Steve Martin: no

Born to Run by Christopher McDougall: no

Bossypants by Tina Fey: no

Cash by Johnny Cash: no

Catherine the Great by Robert K. Massie: no

Chronicles by Bob Dylan: no

Churchill: A Life by Martin Gilbert: no

Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice by Phillip Hoose: no

Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness by William Styron: no

De Profundis and Other Personal Writings by Oscar Wilde: no

Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller: no

Dorothy Parker by Marion Meade: no

Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama: no

Drinking: A Love Story by Caroline Knapp: no

Dust Tracks on a Road by Zora Neale Hurston: no

E-Mc~2 by David Bodanis: no

Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert: no

Endurance by Alfred Lansing: no

Everybody Was So Young by Amanda Vaill: no

Helen Keller: The Story of My Life by Helen Keller: yes

I Am Malala by mlala Yousafzai: no

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou: no

Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer: no

Just Kids by Patti Smith: no

Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain: no

Knock Wood by Candice Bergen: no

Life by Keith Richards: no

Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela: no

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius: no

Mortality by Christopher Hitchens: no

My Life in France by Julia Child: no

Naked by David Sedaris: no

Napoleon by Andrew Roberts: no

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass: no

Night by Elie Wiesel: no

Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin: no

On the Road by Jack Kerouac: no

Open by Andre Agassi: no

Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen: no

Personal History by Katharine Graham: no

Robert A. Caro’s The Years of Lyndon Johnson by Robert A. Caro: no

Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs: no

Savage Beauty by Nancy Milford: no

Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand: no

Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher by Timothy Egan: no

Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov: no

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson: no

Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman: no

Tennessee Williams by John Lahr: no

The Agony and the Ecstasy by Irving Stone: no

The Andy Warhol Diaries by Andy Warhol: no

The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein: no

The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X: no

The Basketball Diaries by Jim Carroll: no

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath: no

The Color of Water by James McBride: no

The Complete Maus by Art Spiegelman: no

The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi: no

The Diary of Anais Nin by Anais Nin: no

The Diary of Frida Kahlo by Carlos Fuentes: no

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls: no

The Gulag Archipeligo by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: no

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot: no

The Kid Stays in the Picture by Robert Evans: no

The Last Lone Inventor by Evan I. Schwartz: no

The Liars’ Club by Mary Karr: no

The Motorcycle Diaries by Ernesto Che Guevara: no

The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester: no

The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris: no

The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder: no

The Tender Bar by J.R. Moehringer: no

The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston: no

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion: no

This Boy’s Life by Tobias Wolff: no

Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. by Ron Chernow: no

Touching the Void by Joe Simpson: no

Travels with Charley in Search of America by John Steinbeck: no

Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand: no

Under the Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes: no

Updike by Adam Begley: no

Vera (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov) by Stacy Schiff: no

West with the Night by Beryl Markham: no

Wild Swans by Jung Chang: no

Wild by Cheryl Strayed: no

Well, I’ve only read five of these, but I have to say, I was very impressed with some of them. The Helen Keller book is amazing. A Long Way Home was devastating, but great. The Mark Twain book was so modern and so clever.

Certainly, though, there are many others I might list which I have read and which in some small way, let me live someone else’s life for a while.

Amazon knows that, and one of the synergies of their having purchased the social reading website Goodreads, is that they can do a curated list like the above and let people contribute to a crowd sourced one…which they have done:

Without at all claiming that they are the best, here are some other biographies/memoirs which come to mind for me:

A Zoo in My Luggage by Gerald Durrell…and indeed, several of the Durrell books (not available for the Kindle)

A Job for Superman by Kirk Alyn…Alyn was Superman in the serials, and this book has some great stories! I bought it from Alyn at a science fiction convention, and that may have colored my perception of it. 🙂 Still, I remember some of the stories easily. There was one where Alyn is talking about a scene carrying, I think, Lois Lane out of a burning building down steps. “Action!” Runs down the steps, but they have to reshoot the scene (smoke or something). Another take. Another problem. Another take. Another take. Another take. Eventually, the director says, “Superman, you’re slowing down.” Alyn explains that the actor is heavy, and the director says something like, “Actor? You’re supposed to be carrying a dummy!” That was part of the perception of Alyn on set as being Superman. Two more. 🙂 Superman is animated flying, but they are standing around (very common on a set). Alyn asks what is happening, and they say they are trying to figure out how Superman is going to take off. Alyn, who was a ballet dancer, says, “I can jump over the camera.” Well, this is a tall camera! They don’t believe their star, but Alyn does it. Alyn points out, amused, that Superman takes off from a ballet position. 😉 The last one was when They did have to do a close up of Superman flying. What they did was build a chest plate with wires, and Alyn would lay in it with legs (and hips) held straight out. That’s right…the plate didn’t get to Alyn’s hips! Picture doing that for a minute or more while they did the shot. Better, lie down on a table with your hips off the edge and try it…

Books by John A. Keel and Hans Holzer…very different people, very different writing style, sort of connected both writing about “paranormal” things. They are both field investigators and both bring you a feel for what it is like being there

What do you think? What are your favorite biographies and memoirs? I know people who say they don’t like to read non-fiction…what books do you think would convince them? These sorts of books also fit into Common Core…does this show the value of that program? Feel free to tell me and my readers what you think by commenting on this post.

Bonus deal: pre-pay for three months of Sling TV ($20 a month) and get a Fire TV Stick for free, or $50 off a Fire TV!

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get. Shop ’til you help!

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

Amazon’s doing another one of their Free App of the Day “bundles”. I put the “bundle” in quotation marks because it isn’t really a bundle…that would mean you could get all of them with one click or tap, and you have to click or tap each one you want.

This is likely to around only a day or two, so if you want any of them, don’t hesitate too long. Remember that with apps, you can also buy them and have them go straight to your Cloud…you don’t need to put them on a device until (and if) you want to use them. I’m going to list the list prices, just so you know how much you are saving, but these are all free (at time of writing in the USA):

OfficeSuite Professional 8 (this has been my Office app of choice…I can use it to read and do light editing of Microsoft Excel, Word, and PowerPoint. I use this for work in addition to home) | 4.0 stars out of 5 | 2,622 customer reviews | list price: $19.99

Remember, I’ve only listed the prices for comparison’s sake…these are all free while the sale is on. Note: check the price before you click or tap that Buy button…the price may not apply in your country, or the sale might have ended.

*When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get. Shop ’til you help!

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

When we look at how long the books have lasted, and how much they have affected people, well…what more do you want from a book? 🙂

I love the playfulness, and the skill. Some of them truly feel like magic, the kind of enchantment you hope strikes you as a writer…and then, you hope you have the fortitude, commitment, and talent to utilize that gift.

It’s no surprise that there are apps of many Dr. Seuss books. They’ve gone into many different media, and successfully.

Not only that, you get an additional sixty Amazon Coins. That’s a special Amazon “currency” which you can use to buy apps and some in-app purchases.

So, it’s sort of like paying $1.39 for an interactive version of the book (it can read aloud to you, read along with you, and more) with a 4.6 star rating (out of five) and 137 customer reviews at the time of writing.

It will work on the Fire tablets and the Fire Phone, and I presume other devices as well.

I’m not seeing an easy landing page for this half off deal, except through my device.

These are some titles I’m noticing:

The Sneetches

Dr. Seuss’s ABC

Gertrude McFuzz

The Cat in the Hat

The Cat in the Hat Comes Back

Oh, The Places You’ll Go!

Mr. Brown Can Moo! Can You?

Fox in Socks

Yertle the Turtle

The Lorax

Hop on Pop

This link will find apps which are not part of the deal, but everything I’ve listed above appeared for me:

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get. Shop ’til you help! By the way, it’s been interesting lately to see Amazon remind me to “start at AmazonSmile” if I check a link on the original Amazon site. I do buy from AmazonSmile, but I have a lot of stored links I use to check for things.

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

Now, I’ve tried to learn from our (now adult) kid, who is a linguist, that as long as people are getting the message across, language isn’t “wrong”. It’s made me more tolerant of misplaced apostrophes and such.

In this case, though, I do think it’s confusing to call this a “bundle”.

It seems to me that by definition, a bundle is a group of objects joined together into a single object, while still maintaining their individual existences.

Take a bunch of sticks and tie them together with string. You can pick that up as if it is one thing: it’s a bundle of sticks. If you still have to pick up each stick one at a time, it isn’t a bundle…it’s still a bunch of sticks. 🙂

You can’t “pick up” these games and apps with one click or tap: you have to order each one separately.

Of course, that might be a good thing. You don’t necessarily want all forty of them, and you might want some of them on one device and some of them on another.

Also, in my case, we already have several…so that might be confusing if it was truly a bundle.

Regardless, there are some interesting titles here. If somebody in your family is getting a Fire tablet or a Fire phone as a gift, these could certainly enhance its value. Update: some of these, like the very popular Terraria (4.4 stars | 2,239 reviews at time of writing) also work on the Fire TV and Fire TV Stick.

They are ones for which you would normally pay, by the way…Amazon also does an FAOTD (Free App of the Day) every day (which would also be one that would normally cost you something**), and there are thousands of free apps beyond that.

In the case of regularly free apps, though, they are often ad-supported…whereas paid apps (even when gotten free like this) generally aren’t.

One disadvantage of ad-supported apps is that many of them need to connect to the internet from time to time to download new ads. That can be a problem if you are somewhere without a wireless connection, you want to play the game or use the app, and it won’t launch.

That shouldn’t be the case with the apps in this collection.

Here’s a list:

Five Nights at Freddys

Plex

Terrarria

Sonc the Hedgehog 2

Farming Simulator 4

My Alarm Clock

Angry Birds Space (they have it twice…I think one is HD, one isn’t, as far as their designators go)

Construction Simulator

Fleksy Keyboard

Wolfram/Alpha

Worms 3

Tetris

Age of Zombies: Season 2

Photo Transfer App

Endomondo Sports Tracker Pro

Root Explorer

To-Fu Fury

Ultimate Guitar Tabs

iReal Pro- Music Book & Play Along

Tunein Radio Pro

PicShop – Photo Editor

Mirroring 360

djay 2

Just 6 Weeks

Quell Reflect

Splashtop Remote Desktop

Calculator Pro

Jump Desktop

InstaWeather Pro

Color Splash FX

Cogs

ElectroDroid Pro

Insta Place

Anomaly Warzone

Paper Train Reloaded

The Muscular System Manual

I tend to get all the free apps, and just store them in the Cloud (that’s an option). That way, if a guest ever wants to use one, they can. 🙂

Enjoy!

Bonus deal: I don’t like to do something which is just apps…this blog is more book focused, especially for a lot of our readers. I did do an app only yesterday, but that was a quickie so people could get a freebie before it disappeared. I’m also reposting A Kindle Carol today (and yesterday and tomorrow), so that’s something bookish. 😉 Since we’re talking about free apps, I’ll go with free e-books. This list is updated hourly:

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get. Shop ’til you help!

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get. Shop ’til you help!

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

Meta

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